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“Cute, hot nerd with a motorbike, I like it. Go on.” Norrie nods with a grin.
“We got together pretty quickly but it was always in our little bubble. He got on okay with the guys, but I always got the feeling he preferred it when it was just us. Not in a bad way. I think he just felt uncomfortable around them. Hudson was on a scholarship, and I think our wealth was a turn-off for him. Ironically, it was one of the things I loved about him. He didn’t care that I had money or a trust fund, and he’d always insist on paying when we went out. He made me feel like he wanted me for me.”
“Swoon.” Eden sighs as she listens, her chin in her palms.
“We fell in love, and I thought he was the one. Then one night, he just disappeared without a word. We’d just… you know.”
“Fucked like bunnies?” Amelia asks.
I laugh and shake my head. “No, it was always more than that with us. I went to the bathroom and, when I came out, he was gone. I didn’t think anything of it but when he didn’t call or answer his door in the dorms, I started to worry. He didn’t talk about his family much, but I knew it was just him and his mom. I went to see him and when I did, my heart shattered.”
Just the memory of that night still has the ability to shred my heart into ribbons. I know in my heart I should explain all of the situation, but I just don’t have it in me to do so without falling apart and my grasp on my emotions is too tenuous right now to try. “He was walking towards his apartment with a tiny baby in his arm, and his other arm around a woman. He looked at her with so much love and my heart broke. He’d kept this whole other life from me and shattered everything we had into a web of lies, or so I thought.”
Pulling my Old Fashioned towards me, I take a huge sip and then look up at my friends. Lottie looks like she wants to go over to Hudson and string him up by his balls, her angry gaze aimed behind me. But I can’t let her because somehow in this mess, I got it wrong. Tia was the baby I saw that day and I have to find a way to talk to him about it and clear the air if we have any hope of pulling this ruse off.
“His sister?” Lottie murmurs, understanding immediately.
“What a dick!” Eden wrinkles her nose as she raises her hand to indicate we want another round of drinks.
“You want me to have Xander kick his ass?” Amelia offers with a quirk of her lips.
I know she’s joking but if I wanted her to do it, I know she would and that thought gives me the courage I need to finish this story and admit my mistake. “Yes, his much younger sister. Turns out that Tia,” I smile just thinking of the adorable little girl. “That’s her name. Well, she’s the baby I saw and the woman I must have seen with him was his mother.”
Norrie sits back stunned. “Oh, wow.”
“I know, right. It’s insane. I spent all this time thinking he cheated on me and had a child behind my back, when, in fact, she’s his sister.”
“But why ghost you? Why not just tell you?”
I glance at Amelia and shrug. “I don’t know. I know his mom died when Tia was a baby, but now the circumstances and Tia is…” I don’t want to explain this in a way that makes Tia sound like anything but the beautiful gift I know she is to Hudson. Watching him with her, I can see she’s the light of his life, but it had to have been tough for him. “Tia has Downs Syndrome and I suspect it has been anything but easy for him. He’s also ridiculously protective of her.”
I look for any sign of judgment in my friends’ faces and find none, which doesn’t surprise me.
“Hudson never talked about his mom being pregnant?”
“No, he was always very tight-lipped about her, and I never pushed it.”
Lottie offers me a kind smile. “You should talk to him. Clear the air a bit. I don’t pretend to be the expert but whatever is between you two isn’t finished. That much I do know.”
I see her look behind me as she speaks, and I feel him before I even turn. Somehow, when Hudson is near, all the oxygen in the room seems to thin until I can hardly catch my breath.
A gentle hand lands on my waist and it takes everything in me not to lean into his touch.
“Hey.”
I angle my head up to look at him and damn near stop breathing from the look of heat in his eyes.“Hi.”
“I’m cooking Thursday night and wanted to check if you still like lasagna?”
I nod and clear my throat. “Yes, love it.”
His smile widens. “Great. It’s Tia’s favorite.”
“Perfect.”
We share a look, and I don’t even know what it means, but it’s soft as if a truce has been called between us and I need that right now. I don’t have enough ball-busting energy right now to fake it with him. And honestly, I miss him and the friendship we had, as well as all the other things we shared.
“I’ll see you Thursday night.”
